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Analysis of Steering Gear

hollowBallistix

New member
Hi there !

I've been using SolidWorks now for the past few years, but only really to
design & optimise assembly equipment, quite frankly the computer
equipment I have in work is really poor, however this week I'm finally
having a new workstation so i'm hoping I can start to get into simulation
& analysis.

On one of our assembly lines we build manual steering gears that are
then fitted into vehicles with C-EPS (Column Electric Power Steering) but
we are having problems sometimes with the rotational torque of the
assembly & I would like to utilise SolidWorks if possibly to simulate the
gear assembly & change certain features of the individual components to
see the effect on the rotational torque pattern.

The gear is a rack & pinion design, and has some other components in
contact with it, one being a bush & the other a support yoke & spring
assembly that keeps the gears in mesh.

Would it be possibly to simulate the movement of the steering gear
through it's entire stroke & generate a graph showing the rotational
torque required on the pinion shaft through the entire range of movement
? thus then by changing some of the component parameters, maybe helix
angle of the pinion, or over-pin diameter of the rack, or frictional
coefficient of the support yoke in contact with the rack, or the spring
force that keeps the yoke in contact with the rack, I can then re-run the
simulation and see how these changes effect the torque curve ?

We have tried to do swap tests with the components from a good / bad
gear & also measured the components, but quite frankly our QA
department is rather weak, so if I can use SolidWorks to run tests & only
change one variable at a time then hopefully it can help me pinpoint the
root cause of the torque fails

As i've not run any simulations / analysis yet then any help pointing me in
the direction of some tutorials & firstly even if it's possible to do what I
want within SolidWorks !

I'm running SolidWorks Professional 2011 with SP1, my service licence ran
out after this update, so that's the version I have to use.
 
hollowBallistix said:
Would it be possibly to simulate the movement of the steering gear through it's entire stroke & generate a graph showing the rotational torque required on the pinion shaft through the entire range of movement ? thus then by changing some of the component parameters, maybe helix angle of the pinion, or over-pin diameter of the rack, or frictional coefficient of the support yoke in contact with the rack, or the spring force that keeps the yoke in contact with the rack, I can then re-run the simulation and see how these changes effect the torque curve ?


Yes it would, but it sounds like a spreadsheet could do this, no? If not (I suppose it depends how complex your geometry is) you could do this as a "motion analysis" and would not need to use FEA.


Jim Shaw
http://www.linkedin.com/in/shawengineering
 

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